and sales are fairly unpredictable, and inventory cushions must be carried,” he explained. “However, if a company doesn’t have good, tight practices in place, it sits on inventory forever or the inventory just goes obsolete.” This is a lesson learned the hard way by many, if not most, distributor- ships in history. Eagland also noted that other aspects of warehouse prac- tice can affect inventory efficiency. For example, “faster, crisper put-away practices can get the item onto the shelves where it can be sold and out the door more quickly,” he said. Melmed offered additional ideas. “Use the system and rely on data, not just instinct,” he urged. “Don’t be afraid to break the mold in your ef- forts to improve your processes. A challenge in implementing LEAN is that the electrical industry is too stuck in what it was; the notion of ‘industry norm’ often gets in the way of improvement.” With specific regard to purchas- ing and stock-keeping, Melmed of- fered two concepts. The first is the shift away from simple buying and into the concept of product manage- ment. “A product manager takes responsibility for what is on the shelves, works closely with sales, and understands and takes into account the risks and rewards of holding a given product or quantity,” he said. The second concept: Viewing all the space in the company as valuable real estate, the use of which must be justified. “In a warehouse setting,” Melmed said, “this means that the product must justify its existence; that is, it must show that it can deliver enough value to justify taking up shelf space that could otherwise be occu- pied by a more valuable product.” Considering that LEAN implemen- tation means change, both experts agreed that a substantial amount of training is essential. “The key train- ing is in the ability to change, adapt, and be flexible: teaching people that we’ve got to break the mold of indus- try standard and embrace change,” said Melmed. Eagland noted, “Training is neces- sary, but it doesn’t have to be in depth about LEAN. Employees need to know the basics and how LEAN benefits the company, and they need to learn to have a ‘bias for action,’ so that every- one can initiate improvement or make suggestions. “Still,” he continued, “there is resis- tance to change. Approach is impor- tant. You aren’t improving employees; you are making their jobs easier.” Eagland and Melmed agreed on the value of a team approach. “Success cannot be achieved in an autocratic or dictatorial way,” Melmed explained. “Rather, the employees must be in- volved to be a part of the process and the success.” Eagland added that a good way to teach the benefits of any proposed change is to get the employ- ees involved in some of the process teams to study and redesign the pro- cess. “That really speeds up the change curve,” Eagland said. Suppose a business is considering LEAN. Rather than diving in and starting a necessarily long process of working through the whole organiza- tion, the decision is made to just pick a bit of low-hanging fruit: tighten up the warehouse picking and packing operations, receiving, or order taking. It is certainly tempting. But Melmed and Eagland caution against that kind of thinking. Said Melmed, “It’s impor- tant to have a vision for the whole process from the beginning and work toward that. However, the change is incremental; everything changes all the time. It is not like a light switch that is just turned on and done.” Eagland was more blunt, noting, “With partial implementation, you will never fully get buy-in, so at some point the gains you have made may revert. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to have a road map of where you want to go, and that road map should be communicated. A road map or plan will help keep the team on track so that all processes can be examined.” Where to start? Are there some necessary first steps and some high- gain ideas that can be put quickly to work? Eagland believes that the only place to start is with “in-depth studies of the process, called process map- ping.” Melmed agreed, saying, “Look first at how the different aspects of the business work together and how they communicate. Be sure you truly un- derstand what people are doing.” Melmed then again urged the careful preparation of the employees to ac- cept change: “Educate the idea leaders and influencers in the business as to how to manage change and get buy-in from team leaders. Above all, be sure to build teams. If you create an envi- ronment that relies on one person and that person is lost, so are you.” In terms of simple, high-gain ideas, Eagland threw in a bonus concept. “People understand images better than print,” he said. “Visual manage- ment tools such as color coding, pic- tures, and workflow diagrams are immediately helpful. KANBAN boards intuitively track progress [KANBAN boards help to track work and work- flow, often as simply as by moving sticky notes through a process map onSPECIAL REPOR T /82 the ELECTRICAL DISTRIBU TOR • Oct. 17www.tEDmag.com“People understand images better thanprint. Visual management tools such as colorcoding, pictures, and workflow diagramsare immediately helpful.”—STEVAN MELMED, director of operations, Earl O’Neil Electric Supply, Toronto